Tori Wrånes: BIG WATER

Start date

27.09.2024

End date

27.04.2025

For one of HAM’s great arched halls, Norwegian contemporary artist Tori Wrånes will create a world inspired by surrealism and imagination. HAM is delighted to exhibit Wrånes’ work for the first time in Finland.

Tori Wrånes: BIG WATER (still), 2022. Six-channel video installation, sound. Photo: Kornkaew Nokkaew.

Tori Wrånes (b. 1978, Kristiansand, Norway), has long made use of various figures and creatures, which she depicts performing rituals in their own, dreamlike worlds. In the exhibition’s namesake piece, BIG WATER (2022), a large six-channel video and sound installation, fur-clad creatures are depicted playing willow flutes and diving beneath the waters along the coasts of both Thailand and Northern Norway. According to the artist, they come together to celebrate the perpetual movement and circulation of the world’s waters. The immersive experience is enhanced by an impressive seating structure that slowly rotates amidst the projections. Alongside the video installation, the exhibition features other, more object-like artworks. Together, the works create a whole that encourages us to imagine further, to surrender to the new and to gather around things that unite us.

Tori Wrånes works across disciplines, incorporating sound, visual arts, and performance into her practice. She is well known for her works, which through warm humor, craft a new reality outside of familiar cultural norms and standards. The freedom to be oneself, to explore, to encounter the new and to empathise are essential to Wrånes’ art. Her work has been exhibited widely in the Nordic countries, as well as in Asia, Australia, and the US.

This exhibition is realized in collaboration with the artist and her studio, with all artworks loaned directly from the artist herself. The exhibition is curated by HAM curator Milja Liimatainen.